


The Way We Get By

by taishige



Category: Johnny's Entertainment, TOKIO
Genre: I don't write anything in forever and then I write this?, M/M, Triggers for like everything, WTF, You've been warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 23:44:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3152777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taishige/pseuds/taishige
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death is not a beautiful thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way We Get By

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this while my emotions were in a really weird place, so you'll have to forgive me. I really wouldn't recommend reading this. I'm not sure why I wrote it.

They say death is a beautiful thing.

People write about it. Poetic incantations that talk of blissful sleep, fading off into nothingness and leaving the cold, cruel world behind.

It’s funny the way something so repugnant can be made out to be elegant and artistic. Romantic, even.

Taichi wonders where the romance is as he holds the muzzle of the revolver against Joshima’s forehead. It shakes. He can’t hold it still. Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow. Fuck Mary and fuck her lambs. Joshima’s oblivious. Well, he’s asleep, but he was oblivious before going to sleep. Taichi can feel his breath on his wrist as he presses the metal of the gun against Joshima’s skin. It’s making a little indent. A bump where the skin gets bunched together from the pressure.

“Fuck.”

Taichi pulls back, holding the gun awkwardly up in the air. The indent’s still there. It’s like a divot in his skin, right in the middle of his forehead. Joshima doesn’t even move. Taichi’s hand is still shaking, so he sits it down on his knee.

Fuck death.

The moonlight is half-cracked, coming in through the window. It forms an arc on the lump that’s Joshima’s body under the sheets. It’s beautiful and dirty. Dirty because they haven’t even cleaned up, and Taichi knows there’s cum on the sheets, cum up the other man’s ass, probably leaking out and making a nice, white stain even as they’re lying there, but Taichi’s never been one for hygiene and he’s not about to start worrying about it now.

They’d had a good run. Two years of spontaneous shags that had eventually led to two years of hush-hush planned shags that had eventually led to tonight. Taichi doesn’t regret any of it. Maybe he’s angry more than anything else. But he’s past anger now. Tomorrow the paper is going to come out and they’re going to be on the front page. Joshima doesn’t know. He doesn’t need to know. Taichi’s going to keep him from knowing.

He wonders if Mai will be angry or sad when she reads it. He’s been fucking Joshima longer than he’s been fucking her. But he’d never proposed to Joshima. He doesn’t live with Joshima. So there’s a difference. Maybe it will depend on what pictures they publish. They have his entire memory card. Girl at the dry cleaner’s had made sure of that. There’s some real nice ones of him and Joshima making cheesy googly faces at the camera naked in the sheets from just a little while ago that Taichi can remember quite vividly. He’s also pretty sure there’s at least one or two of them sucking the lips off each other somewhere in the pile.

Mad. He imagines she’ll be mad. But not half as mad as the agency when they have to deal with the phone calls.

His life is going to end tomorrow when the presses roll.

He glances back over at Joshima. The other man’s hips look delicious beneath the sheets.

No. Tonight.

He presses the gun back to Joshima’s forehead. It’s supposed to be easy, isn’t it? It only takes one tiny jerk of the index finger. Pull the trigger and it’s all over. None of that mess like if you try to strangle someone. None of that inefficiency like a pillow over the face.

Joshima would never have to know. Would never have to watch his life come crashing down.

So easy.

Taichi’s throat is tight. It’s hard to swallow. He can’t swallow. Mom, Dad, your son is a murderer. But you won’t care about that. You’ll be more disappointed that he fucked dudes—that he was willing to put his life, career, and future perfect family on the line to fuck one certain dude. You’ll see him in the paper in all his disgusting glory and shake your heads wondering where you went wrong. We raised you better than that. But at least we still have one good egg.

Taichi’s finger twitches, and the gun goes off.

The top half of Joshima’s head explodes against the pillow. Chunks of skin and bone litter the sheets.

Shit shit shit.

Taichi’s eyes bulge out of his head. It’s disgusting. He can’t look, but he has to. He can see his brain, oh god, he can see his brain. Blood gurgles down the flayed edges of his cheeks and stains the pillow cover.

He’s going to be sick.

Taichi instinctively drops the gun and brings his hands to his mouth. It’s surreal. Joshima’s bottom half continues to lie lazily in the moonlight as chunks of gray brain matter collect in the pool of blood growing beneath the remaining half of his head.

Death is not beautiful.

He can’t seem to cry. Scared. He’s too scared.

What will happen to my mind when my brain is torn into tiny little pieces? Taichi holds his hands over his mouth and tries to breathe. The sheets are quickly becoming heavy and wet. Joshima’s lips are still slightly parted as though taking in the long, slow breaths of sleep. A piece of skin from his forehead balances precariously on the end of his nose.

Will I still be able to think once I’m dead?

Maybe I’ll be a ghost.

What if only people whose brains are still intact when they die become ghosts? Really, how else are they supposed to think afterwards? That big, gray wrinkly thing in their skulls is kind of important. Soon his is going to be like swiss cheese.

He doesn’t like swiss cheese.

Taichi picks the gun back up. There are red splatters along its steely black surface. It shakes in the moonlight. _He_ shakes in the moonlight.

Ghosts are fucking stupid. Who wants to be a ghost anyway?

He brings the gun up to his temple. It feels strangely warm. Dear god, this is really it. Forty years down the drain only to off himself in his own bed next to his gay lover. What a story. Yeah, kid, you’ll do great for a while. You’ll be all famous and shit and making music and banging chicks but suddenly one day you’ll fall for an old geezer who gets on your nerves so much you wanna fuck him into the mattress, only you won’t wanna admit it to yourself so you’ll get yourself hitched to someone else anyway and end up blowing your own head off when it all goes to pot. That’s what he’d write in his reverse time capsule. If those even exist.

The gun is shaking against his skin. His whole arm is shaking.

I don’t wanna be swiss cheese.

He glances back over at the bloody, slimy crater that used to be Joshima’s head. What happened to his eyes? Are they rolling around somewhere inside all that sloppy red goo? Or did the impact of the bullet split them open too? Like little eggs. Now his pupils are running everywhere like egg yolk. Yes, I’ll have two eyes, over easy, with a side of fried cerebellum. Light on salt, please, I’m on a diet.

His hand is shaking so violently, the muzzle of the gun is thwack, thwack, thwacking against the side of his head. It’s giving him a headache. He brings his other arm up to steady it, long fingers wrapping around his bony little wrist. He’s having a hard time holding onto the gun now. Don’t let it all end like this. At least his dick will still be intact. They can bronze it and put it in a museum somewhere. “Big gay dick.” It’ll be like a porno site. Only they’ll have to pixelate it because he’s Japanese. Damn those Japanese dicks.

The gun almost slips from his hand and his heart skips a beat. He quickly readjusts his grip, and his finger twitches over the trigger.

He hears it go off before he comprehends it.

Then suddenly his vision is undulating.

His jaw is gone. Half of it hangs off his cheeks tentatively via bloody sinews and ripped skin. The other half is in pieces strewn across the bed and the nearby wall.

He’d missed. How the hell could he have missed?! His head is a big fucking bulbous target.

Blood guzzles down his neck, his chest, splattering the sheets covering his lap. He tries to move his mouth to let out an audible expletive, but his tongue and lips aren’t there anymore.

He tosses the gun away. His whole body is shaking now. He can barely even grip it.

Blood and fire cloud his vision.

Up. Get up, you big fucking moron. He shakily pushes the sheets away and gets to his feet. The carpet is soft beneath his skin except where bits of his jaw squish up between his toes. He brings his hands up to staunch the bleeding and ends up tickling his top teeth.

Fuck, he doesn’t want to bleed out. Lie here until he finally just dies. The pain and loneliness would certainly do their dirty work, but they’d be agonizingly slow. The world spins as he takes a step. His hands and arms are red now. Red, red, red. Red like the wine he and Joshima had shared tonight during dinner. Red like Joshima’s tongue as he’d sucked it between their lips and run his fingers through his hair again and again.

Taichi makes it to the glass balcony door. The quiet room seems to erupt once it’s open, the sound of cars and wind and life filtering in. They’re not far up. Maybe four floors. He can’t even remember what fucking floor he lives on. He’s a mess. Oh, sinner man, where you gonna run to? The only way up is down. His red, slimy hands grab the railing as the wind sends flecks of his bloodied insides off into the night air.

At least he can’t mess this up, right? He pulls himself up and over the guardrail, sitting on it for a moment. It’s cold and hard against his bare backside. Fuck, his head is killing him. It’s starting to make him dizzy. Maybe this would be a more exciting way to go anyhow.

He slips off. And the ground rises up so fast it makes his stomach churn.

It takes him a moment. He opens his eyes and sees his arm lying a few feet off, chunky flayed skin surrounding the snapped-off bone. It feels like he’s swimming. There’s blood pooling in the cracks of the sidewalk. He can’t feel his legs. He can’t feel anything. His ribs are poking up through his backside like an inside-out skeleton as his innards leak out onto the pavement.

Only an idiot thinks that jumping from a few stories could instantly kill you. He wants to pound his head against the sidewalk, but he can’t seem to move it. There’s people around him, staring. If one of them could give him a hand, that would sure be nice. Or even his own hand. Maybe someone could just kick it over here towards him. Be a pal. Oh, come on, like you’ve never seen a guy jump out of a window before? At least he didn’t do it in front of a train and inconvenience everyone’s day.

He wonders if his legs are still connected. He certainly can’t feel them. But he can’t look backwards to check. How could someone think this is beautiful? This is disgusting. He feels disgusting. This is the kind of thing people have nightmares about. But at least his brain isn’t swiss cheese now. Only his body.

He blinks. Fuck, it hurts. It’s not any sort of sharp pain. It’s more like he’s being pressed in a vice. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze until his limbs pop off and his eyes ooze out of their sockets. Now he’ll get the front page for sure. They’ll probably combine the two stories. Gay musician hurtles himself out of four-story window and plunges to his not-so-instant death. Exclusive pictures of him doing the naughty inside!

Fuck, why is everyone just staring at him?

Tired. He’s tired now.

Maybe they’ll draw one of those little white outlines around where his body is lying. It’s too bad Joshima couldn’t have jumped with him. Then they could have been twins.

But no, Joshima deserves better than this. Joshima deserves better than him. Not that it matters now. Joshima’s head is in fifty pieces up in the bedroom.

Fade away. Fade away. Fuck, he’s so disgusting. Somebody clean up this mess. No one wants to look at death. Death should be kept behind closed doors. He sighs, only not really because his lungs don’t seem to be working. There’s a few dozen splintered bones stuck up through them.

He closes his eyes. It’s dark now. He can imagine he’s still up in bed and Joshima is in his arms and they’re going to wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow without a cloud in the sky. Sorry, Mom, but I just couldn’t go on like this. You’ll have to forgive your son. Or what’s left of him. He kind of fell apart after everything that happened, but I’m sure you understand.

For just one moment, Taichi feels an overwhelming sense of sadness sweep across his frame.

Then blood wells up in his throat, dark red globs leaking down between his lips to join the pool around his body. He’s gone.

The story in the next day’s paper doesn’t mention anything about the memory card.

They'd never had the memory card.

The girl at the dry cleaner’s had tossed it in the river.


End file.
